Ouya plans to launch a new console every year

And take advantage of faster components and lower prices.

Ouya, the company making the Ouya Android-powered gaming console, announced at the DICE summit in Las Vegas this week that it will launch a new version of its console every year to take advantage of lower prices and better processors. “There will be an Ouya 2 and an Ouya 3,” said CEO Julie Uhrman. “We’ll take advantage of... prices falling. So if we can get more than 8GB of Flash in our box, we will."

Uhrman added that Ouya will approach this strategy just as mobile companies have with handsets. Games will maintain backward compatibility and be tied to a user’s account, much as how Steam works now. The first Ouya console will launch with a Tegra 3 quad-core A9 chip and run at a clock speed of 1.6GHz.

The Ouya is slated to ship next month for Kickstarter backers. It will launch at brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, Target, and GameStop in June and retail for $99.

The components of the Ouya are nearly free compared to console hardware. Last-gen arm SOCs are about $10. An 8 GiB flash chip is about $5. The RAM is probably $2. The cost of manufacturing the Ouya is likely about $25. This is an order of magnitude cheaper than a traditional console. The controller probably costs $10-20 to manufacture. The large margin between cost and price is necessary for setup and software development. If Ouya is successful, setup and software costs become minuscule. In a year, they can easily drop the price of the original Ouya to $50, essentially making the Ouya "free" with a controller, and release a more powerful Ouya II at the same pricepoint or maybe $50-75 without a controller.

Paying $50 to $100 dollars a year to make all your games look better and to play new games better is entirely reasonable. I already pay more than that towards my phone (and that much per month for service), even though my old phones work fine. I also play games on my PC, which requires a ~$200 video card every other year and a ~$600 new computer every 4 years or so, averaging about $250 a year. I doubt that the Ouya will ever replace a PC for games, but its cost, even assuming I bought one every year, is small.

The feature that I think is necessary for future success will be remote control from a cell phone or tablet. To browse the web, you need a keyboard, but people don't want a keyboard on their coffee table. Being able to use your phone or tablet for text and touch entry would make for a very slick interface for web browsing and media playback.

I don't think Ouya will, in the long run, be successful. My prediction is that, with the low cost of a reasonably powerful SOC, TV manufacturers will simply integrate them into sets and run Android games directly, essentially upgrading slow and clunky "smart" tv's into giant tablets. These will not be upgradable, which might allow for an Ouya device to flourish since TVs' lifetimes are typically 10 years or so, while SOC upgrade cycles are about a year now (the end of Moore's law will eventually lengthen that).

The trouble is that in the best-case scenario in which a lot of people buy Ouyas, it's not going to take many years of hardware updates before the old models aren't supported with new software. So although a predictable roadmap of incremental updates has some merit, once per year strikes me as being too fast.

The components of the Ouya are nearly free compared to console hardware. Last-gen arm SOCs are about $10. An 8 GiB flash chip is about $5. The RAM is probably $2. The cost of manufacturing the Ouya is likely about $25. This is an order of magnitude cheaper than a traditional console. The controller probably costs $10-20 to manufacture. The large margin between cost and price is necessary for setup and software development. If Ouya is successful, setup and software costs become minuscule. In a year, they can easily drop the price of the original Ouya to $50, essentially making the Ouya "free" with a controller, and release a more powerful Ouya II at the same pricepoint or maybe $50-75 without a controller.

Paying $50 to $100 dollars a year to make all your games look better and to play new games better is entirely reasonable. I already pay more than that towards my phone (and that much per month for service), even though my old phones work fine. I also play games on my PC, which requires a ~$200 video card every other year and a ~$600 new computer every 4 years or so, averaging about $250 a year. I doubt that the Ouya will ever replace a PC for games, but its cost, even assuming I bought one every year, is small.

The feature that I think is necessary for future success will be remote control from a cell phone or tablet. To browse the web, you need a keyboard, but people don't want a keyboard on their coffee table. Being able to use your phone or tablet for text and touch entry would make for a very slick interface for web browsing and media playback.

I don't think Ouya will, in the long run, be successful. My prediction is that, with the low cost of a reasonably powerful SOC, TV manufacturers will simply integrate them into sets and run Android games directly, essentially upgrading slow and clunky "smart" tv's into giant tablets. These will not be upgradable, which might allow for an Ouya device to flourish since TVs' lifetimes are typically 10 years or so, while SOC upgrade cycles are about a year now (the end of Moore's law will eventually lengthen that).

I think a lot of people are missing the point. This isn't supposed to be a replacement for PS3, XBOX, etc. Its supposed to be a way to play Android games on your big screen with a proper controller. Android-like refresh cycles aren't really surprising. Keep in mind that with an Android phone, you've got 2 to 3 years before there's a significant amount of games that are beyond playable on your hardware so you don't have to buy a new one every year and add in that there are no carriers to get in the way of OS updates ... sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

As long as all new games run on the older versions of the consoles, this isn't an issue is it?

I buy a game now and it'll run on my 6 year old PS3. I highly doubt any android games in 6 years will run on a Gen1 Ouya.

If Android is even around as a platform in 6 years....

If you buy a game now, it will run just fine on the Ouya 6 that you have in 6 years. I'm much more interested in keeping my existing game library running on newer systems than I am in running new games on an obsolete 6 year old system, particularly when that system is only $100. While it's sometimes fun to play 10 or 20 year old games, I'd prefer not to have to dig out 10 to 20 year old hardware to do it (and hope it still works).

Android is open source, which means it will remain available as a platform as long as any significant stakeholders want it to remain available. Even if phone manufacturers dump it, and Google ceases development, Ouya can still fork it and maintain the existing code base, and add any new features that they feel like adding. If Ouya is successful enough, developers will still keep making games for it even if there are no other Android-based platforms. If Ouya is unsuccessful, you just have to hope you can get those Ouya games running on other Android devices, which is more than you could hope for if MS discontinued the X-box. If Ouya and Android both fail, you're basically out of luck if your system dies unless you want to buy used equipment on eBay, but that's basically where you are with outdated consoles now anyway.

Apparently they are damned if they do(by forum posters), damned if they don't.

If they stuck with a Tegra 3 for years, they would get laughed out of business.

There is nothing proprietary here. If they didn't build a Ouya 2, someone could build a better device that is compatible.

People should realize this was not going to have a multi-year lifespan like a console, it was going to be more rapidly upgraded.

I wasn't interested in any of the expensive proprietary consoles, but I am keen on a Ouya 2, this seems like a perfect inexpensive living room device. Able to run apps and do light HTPC duty and most importantly it is non proprietary. It will play mkv files, anyone can write applications.

Also worth noting that controllers are 50 bucks and a new Ouya (console + power plug + controller) is $100. Assuming they sold (from version 2 onward obviously) starter kits and upgrade kits with no controllers or accessories, seems they could probably deliver these upgraded units extremely cheap. Even more so if the things are as easy to take apart as they claim and they can just sell upgrade motherboards and you just swap them into your current Ouya case.

if this turns out to be the case, and they add video streaming services or XMBC I would gladly buy one, then pay $25/$50 every year or every other year to upgrade the hardware.. and if they could integrate android tablets/phones as controllers for the video stuff (or incorporate it into some games) that would be a great bonus..

edit: then mail back the old parts for them to recycle? (for those concerned about waste)

Sounds good to me. I'd rather spend 99 a year to get the latest hardware than spend 500 every 5 years and the hardware be outdated in 2 years.

The problem is that it's starting off with 2-year old hardware, so you're paying $100 each year to continually be 2-years behind the 'latest' hardware.

Well, it's more like 1 year old technology, approaching 1.5 when Ouya goes on sale to the general public. Tegra 3 based tablets started showing up around the beginning of 2012. Transformer Prime was released in December 2011, but I seem to remember it being a bit scarce and hard to get until early 2012.

Ouya seems like it's designed to be easy to open up and tinker with, without needing special tools, so I think it would be really cool if you could buy an upgrade board that fit in the same case for $50 or $75. At that point, the cost of a system upgrade is getting into the same neighborhood as the price of a new game on a traditional console.

Right now, mobile processors are improving fast enough that it might be tempting to upgrade every year, but eventually I think they'll plateau at a "good enough" level where you could skip an upgrade or two without falling too far behind the performance curve.

Isn't multi-year stability one of the main advantages to a console? Constant significant HW upgrades, incompatibility with my apps in my normal android stores out of the box. Indie developers keep gushing, but the Ouya seems like a worse and worse deal for the customer all the time.

Depends on how they do it.. After all, the xbox and ps3 have been updated several times with newer/cheaper components... They just don't call it a new console.

they don't call it a new console because the only thing change is couple things here and there and make them smaller. Increased hard drive size, smaller chip like the cell etc. The Ouya developers are talking not just about storage size but possibility newer Tegra chips. Let's say Tegra 4 is affordable, next year they might release it as an Ouya 2

I may have missed some article covering this, but, what kind of software can we expect to make this worthwhile as a gaming console (not just a $100 media player)? Any major franchise some successful indie port?

(I hear about old console emulation, but any pc made within the past 7 years can do this quite effectively and likely for free or nearly that, and probably also play most modern pc titles)

Isn't multi-year stability one of the main advantages to a console? Constant significant HW upgrades, incompatibility with my apps in my normal android stores out of the box. Indie developers keep gushing, but the Ouya seems like a worse and worse deal for the customer all the time.

It's starting to sound like the folks that got the KS-gen Ouyas are definitely now buying beta boxes. I'm glad I decided not to sink into this one. I'll just wait for the Steambox.

Cheap hardware can be mirrored to my TV from my iPhone or tablet. Manufacturers will take cheap hardware and eventually integrate it directly into new TVs as well. I just don't get why this is exciting news.I'm much more interested in seeing the PS4 and Xbox 720. There we have consoles with large budget companies backing them up with new games beyond throwing birds and running over cliffs.

Wow is this ever stupid. They had everything right up until they said this 'every year' foolishness. I can see every 3 or 4 years, but every year is just absurd. I'm of the opinion from everything I've seen lately that a $100 tegra 4 box would be a fantastic little 4 year platform.

This is no different that new phones being released every year with hardware boosts and the previous years android on it. That's all there doing here. Comparing this lowly little android box to a Xbox/PS is apples to oranges.

Personally I'm not too interested in the Ouya. Android is great: for phones and tablets. Till it fully merges with a desktop OS I'm not interested. Or if they release a peripheral dongle to plug into my phones mini-usb so i can use my phone as the Ouya, then its got my interest.

I really don't think this will be such an issue. Actually building games which take advantage of more powerful hardware generally requires more development people and time. More art assets, more things made out of polygons in order to show more polygons to the player etc. Indie developers aren't likely to have the resources to build that much content. It's telling that a lot of the games being proposed for Ouya aren't even likely to tax the 1+ year old Tegra 3. So I think this will probably shake out win-win. Either Ouya remains a bastion of indie development with no AAA titles and a Tegra 4 will easily last for years as far as what indie devs can actually produce with their budgets. OR Ouya will become a target for big money developers which will increase the "push" to upgrade every year but we'll have better games and more competition and better/cheaper updates and DLC without MS and Sony forcing draconian rules into the update process.

I really don't see this nightmare scenario happening where every year a new Ouya is released and EVERY (or even most games) suddenly target the new version and don't care at all if their games even run on the older versions. It hasn't happened with iPads or gaming PCs. I just don't get where this paranoia comes from. Doing that is bad for business when you are making games. If a dev is too stupid to even realize this, their games probably aren't very good in the first place.

Isn't multi-year stability one of the main advantages to a console? Constant significant HW upgrades, incompatibility with my apps in my normal android stores out of the box. Indie developers keep gushing, but the Ouya seems like a worse and worse deal for the customer all the time.

Depends on how they do it.. After all, the xbox and ps3 have been updated several times with newer/cheaper components... They just don't call it a new console.

they don't call it a new console because the only thing change is couple things here and there and make them smaller. Increased hard drive size, smaller chip like the cell etc. The Ouya developers are talking not just about storage size but possibility newer Tegra chips. Let's say Tegra 4 is affordable, next year they might release it as an Ouya 2

Yup, the console revisions are designed to not impact the core performance/behaviour characteristics.

Remember when Xbox 360 was redesigned at 45 nm to combine the CPU & GPU into a single chip? They had to add blocks to introduce latency so that timing was the same as previous revisions. You can insert that launch title game disc from that out-of-business developer into the newest revision 5 years later and it should behave identically.

Wow is this ever stupid. They had everything right up until they said this 'every year' foolishness. I can see every 3 or 4 years, but every year is just absurd. I'm of the opinion from everything I've seen lately that a $100 tegra 4 box would be a fantastic little 4 year platform.

Alright. third try here...

How much different is a smartphone made 3 years ago from a smartphone made today? Big. Much more RAM and storage, quad core processors? Gorilla Glass? In another 3 years, the phone you buy today will be dated. The phone you bought 6 years ago will feel downright ancient.

The issue with games running on Ouya will not be--if they do it right--the tegra processor that you can get today. Any more than you have issues running PC games on a system built years before. The QUALITY of the game--how it looks, how smoothly it plays--will probably be smoother on next gen tech, but if Ouya does it right, then Ouya 1 will have a long life cycle same as if you buy a decent smartphone it will be useful for many years, if you buy a decent laptop it will work well for many years even though software goes through many upgrades and modifications.

The "forward compatibility" arguments are just plain silly. This is not a console in a traditional sense, nor should it be approached as one. Its a smart smartphone, or a very limited linux media box. Games will be designed around that model, not around the one-size-fits-all-because-all-are-equally-Xbox of an Xbox only game.

I don´t think this can work for the reason that we already have PC for this.

PC gamers probably at least change their video card each year.

One of the reasons consoles are so popular, is because if you purchased a PS3, you now you will be to play the latest games for the next 10 years.

The problem otherwise leads to "this games works or requires this hardware" and will not run in the console made 2 years back.

This is the biggest problems. Game developers make their games to work on consoles. So they know exactly which hardware everyone has and for which hardware the game needs to run.

This is why on consoles there are not visual settings, you put the disk and the game just works. With PC the game may or maybe not work. Maybe it works in low settings, maybe it runs with lag on hi settings, or maybe its unplayable so slow it is.

This why people like consoles. They don´t need to be keep adjusting settings, what works in your friends console works with the same quality and speed in your console.

If developers need to target games for different hardware each year, we go back to the mess its with PC games. And basically PC games upgrade their hardware all the time to be able to play the game released this year. With consoles, you know the game released later this year will just work with your 10 year old console.

As long as all new games run on the older versions of the consoles, this isn't an issue is it?

I buy a game now and it'll run on my 6 year old PS3. I highly doubt any android games in 6 years will run on a Gen1 Ouya.

If Android is even around as a platform in 6 years....

Do you really think you aren't going to be able to emulate the hardware that is being used in this gen 1 device in 6 years? Geesh. I don't have my NES anymore because I don't need it. I can emulate the environment and run the ROMs on my PC. granted you loose the nostalgia factor.

This is probably the wrong thread / comment section for this, but since a fellow tree hugger already mentioned it I'll expand on it.

Old style consoles, which run for 8 years, aren't even good environmentally, and you want to get a new one every year? Not even mentioning PCs or mobile devices, which some idiots replace 2-3 times a year because they can't look after them, or they "need" the newest thing.This is a general problem which humanity somehow always manages to ignore. We aren't recyclers, and until we are we shouldn't act like we are. How many years do we have until there are no more new minerals to mine? Oh yeah, lets dig in the ocean. Hmm.. Ocean floor empty: Why not asteroid mining? Maybe in 80 years.

And why should one person have 10 electrical gadgets in his household while a hundred have none?

We should live in harmony with the Earth. Once we know how to prevent the problems we're creating, we can go ahead with our lifestyle. Until then, try to tone it back. Please. You know what you're doing is wrong, you're only doing it because everybody else is too, and there's commercials supporting it. Gee, who does that remind me of.

How much different is a smartphone made 3 years ago from a smartphone made today? Big. Much more RAM and storage, quad core processors? Gorilla Glass? In another 3 years, the phone you buy today will be dated. The phone you bought 6 years ago will feel downright ancient.

The issue with games running on Ouya will not be--if they do it right--the tegra processor that you can get today. Any more than you have issues running PC games on a system built years before. The QUALITY of the game--how it looks, how smoothly it plays--will probably be smoother on next gen tech, but if Ouya does it right, then Ouya 1 will have a long life cycle same as if you buy a decent smartphone it will be useful for many years, if you buy a decent laptop it will work well for many years even though software goes through many upgrades and modifications.

The "forward compatibility" arguments are just plain silly. This is not a console in a traditional sense, nor should it be approached as one. Its a smart smartphone, or a very limited linux media box. Games will be designed around that model, not around the one-size-fits-all-because-all-are-equally-Xbox of an Xbox only game.

Perhaps I missed the part where they announced some guarantee of compatibility of current software with future hardware? Oh, they didn't? Yeah, they didn't.

I think they're going to fragment their marketplace all to hell with a 1 year upgrade model. Wait and see.

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.